The crest factor or peak-to-average ratio (PAR) is a measurement of a waveform, calculated from the peak amplitude of the waveform divided by the RMS value of the waveform. In many wireless communication technologies, the communication signals often have a high peak-to-average ratio (PAR) that can impair the efficiency of the power amplifiers (PAs) employed in wireless base stations. A number of techniques have been proposed or suggested for reducing the PAR in order to improve the efficiency of the power amplifier to thereby allow a higher average power to be transmitted before saturation occurs.
Crest Factor Reduction (CFR) is a digital technique used to reduce the PAR of the transmitted wireless signals. In a wireless transmitter, for example, the CFR is often incorporated with digital pre-distortion (DPD). The DPD serves to linearize the power amplifier to improve the efficiency of the power amplifier. CFR is often used in conjunction with DPD to maximize the transmit average power for a given power amplifier saturation voltage. Frequently, the CFR is positioned after a digital up conversion (DUC) stage and before DPD and/or equalization.
Generally, Crest Factor Reduction techniques employ peak detection and then peak cancellation by subtracting a cancellation pulse from the detected peaks, to reduce the peak amplitude and thereby reduce the PAR. The cancellation pulse is pre-computed and has a frequency response that matches the signal/channel spectral response. Thus, by design, the clipping noise is confined inside the signal channel, and does not introduce any noise in adjacent channels or out of band.
When canceling peaks, however, new peaks are introduced (this is known as “peak re-growth”) due to the ringing on both sides of the pulse (the pulse is traditionally designed as a linear phase symmetrical FIR filter with a plurality of taps). There are taps on both sides of the center tap. Thus, peaks can be introduced in current or past sample values. In order to address the peaks introduced in past samples, existing CFR algorithms require multiple iterations to cancel all peaks, thereby impairing efficiency. Thus, a need exists for Crest Factor Reduction techniques that can be performed with a reduced number of iterations and with reduced complexity.